The immigration department has acknowledged a major privacy breach after personal information on hundreds of employees was accidentally released. Officials blamed “administrative error” for the violation of the Privacy Act: “The breach was discovered”.
Federal auditors have been assigned to monitor “schemes” involving Tax-Free Savings Accounts, according to Canada Revenue Agency memos. Wealthier taxpayers have deposited billions under the program: “Taxpayers and their advisors are becoming increasingly aggressive”.
The Governor General’s Office requires “tactful” telephone operators willing to manage “unusual” calls. Rideau Hall issued a job notice for switchboard staff with keen judgment willing to work overtime without extra pay: “No premium will be paid for weekends and statutory holidays”.
A Supreme Court ruling gives provinces the go-ahead in enforcing automatic roadside suspensions for suspected drunk drivers. Justices upheld a British Columbia law that saw drivers lose their license without being convicted: “The state can punish you in ways other than sending you to prison”.
In the Conservatives’ School of Economics,
Canada is not in a recession;
it’s only going through a contraction
of the energy sector.
In their Faculty of Environmental Science,
climate change and Kyoto
aren’t on the curriculum.
Our planet is fine,
despite contractions of the polar ice caps
and the disappearance of the world’s glaciers.
And in their School of Medicine – I suppose –
women don’t go into labour.
They merely experience 60-second long
contractions,
sometime around the due date.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
User fees make sense. People who want heated parking and water ski lessons could not fairly expect subsidies from non-skiing pedestrians. But what if true costs of goods or services are so deeply hidden no ordinary accounting is possible? This is where Cleaner, Greener, Healthier steps in. Professor David Boyd of Simon Fraser University calculates actual costs of environmental degradation and totes up the bill. The result is arresting.
Take pesticides. On the polluter-pay principle, Sweden taxes imported farm chemicals at $4.75 per kilogram; in Norway the rate is about $4.30. Finland, Denmark, France, Italy – all charge a pesticide tax reflecting the cost of environmental rehabilitation from the long-term effects of chemical use. The tax in Canada is zero. “Even worse, any pesticide used in agriculture regardless of its toxicity is exempt from the federal GST,” writes Boyd. “Rather than discourage the use of pesticides or reflect their substantial negative effects on human health and ecosystems, this subsidy encourages farmers to use pesticides instead of alternative methods of pest control.”
Even the cost of regulating pesticides is heavily subsidized. Health Canada has not increased manufacturers’ licensing fees since 1997. When the department proposed a modest increase in 2015, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency noted fees would still only cover 30 percent of government costs of testing chemicals for toxicity. “If we made our fees too high, it would potentially be a disincentive to industry to enter the Canadian market,” one official told the Senate agriculture committee.
So, manufacturers and farmers draw a fat subsidy for immediate benefit, and everyone else pays the bill. That’s nice work if you can get it.
“Why does Canada lag behind in protecting the health of its citizens from environmental hazards?” Cleaner, Greener asks. “What are the economic, political, legal and cultural factors that explain this systemic failure?”
Professor Boyd blames shrewd lobbying, short-term legislative agendas – and human nature. To drive from Halifax to Vancouver is to see so many lakes and so many trees, simple arithmetic suggests we could poison every lake and cut every tree and still have enough lakes and trees to last a thousand years.
“The chasm between values and actions is that Canadians’ pride in this country’s striking natural beauty, bounty and immensity creates a blind spot about environmental impacts,” Boyd writes; “Canadians consistently express strong environmental values in public opinion polls, but there is a large gulf between their words and their actions. We are among the world’s most prolific consumers of oil, natural gas, electricity and water. Canadians are world leaders in the unenviable categories of household garbage production and per capita emissions of greenhouse gases, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds.”
User fees would mean an asthma tax on Ford Motor Co.; a mercury tax on the Mining Association of Canada; and a groundwater tax on Imperial Oil. Instead regulators concluded environmental impacts are so pervasive, and the cost is so onerous, it’s easier to bury the bills in the accounting of everyday life.
Cleaner, Greener is so candid it’s alarming, so comprehensive it leads the reader to a damning rhetorical question: Why is it Swedes and Norwegians could figure this out, but the Government of Canada is paralyzed by fear of industry?
By Holly Doan
Cleaner, Greener, Healthier: A Prescription For Stronger Canadian Environmental Laws & Policies, by David R. Boyd; University of British Columbia Press; 412 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-30478; $34.95
Privatized inspections of weights and measures are still being “phased in” more than five years after cabinet introduced a bill promising tougher scrutiny of gas pump gouging. Department of Industry memos indicate full inspections under Bill C-14 will not be in place till 2016, and violators will be let off with an “education” letter: “There have been no fines”.
A Conservative MP is refusing comment after co-opting a union slogan in a newspaper ad targeting voters. Cheryl Gallant, the party’s former Deputy House Leader, was cited by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers for misleading claims: “It’s utterly ridiculous”.
Health Canada is concealing routine drug company research cited as justification for new regulations on over-the-counter sales of a common painkiller. The department said Canadians would have to file Access To Information requests for the study, though it’s part of public consultations: “You give and they take”.
Canada’s largest locally-owned independent brewery has lost an epic trademark battle with a Mexican exporter. Evidence in the case included readings from a Spanish-English dictionary, and the menu from a burrito restaurant at the 1986 World’s Fair in Vancouver: “Only a minimal proportion of the Canadian population speaks Spanish”.
Fallout from a Canada-U.S. trade dispute could force the closure of food processing plants, warns an industry group. Cabinet has threatened to impose $1 billion in tariffs on American imports, from frozen orange juice to milled rice: “It will be another tax”.
Cabinet has quietly awarded election-year pay hikes and retroactive pension top-ups to senior civil servants. Raises newly-approved by the Prime Minister include 19% for a federal board chairman. The adjustments appeared to short-cut a recent Treasury Board order capping increases at 0.5%: “I have a difficult time”.
Federal Court has thrown out another lawsuit by adherents of the so-called “detax” movement blamed by Canada Revenue Agency for millions in lost taxes. Four Ontario plaintiffs challenged the Income Tax Act as unconstitutional: ‘It’s a well-known path of illogic, presumption and pseudo-legal rants’.
A seven-figure fine on Bell Canada for cooking positive reviews of its My Bell Mobile app sends a message to industry, says a consumer advocate. The company was fined $1.25 million after Bell employees wrote lavish reviews of the company’s own product: “This kind of behaviour is not uncommon”.
Heavy duty mechanics earn more than nurses, and plumbers make more than mathematicians, according to new data compiled by Employment Canada. The department noted at the peak of the oil boom, Alberta mechanics pulled in higher salaries than chemical engineers: “There are regional differences”.
